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  • Blogger calls for end to Greenwash

    Time to Stop the Greenwashing

    Dr Glen Barry of Earth Meanders  

     

    Global ecological sustainability depends upon identifying and acting upon ambitious, sufficient eco-policies now; and rejecting misleading, exploitative and inadequate reformist pandering

    The Earth and all species including humans are threatened with imminent ecological ruin. You should be afraid, very afraid. Yet real hope remains that fundamental social change can avert looming failure of global ecosystems. The biggest current obstacle to such change is that now that everyone, every product and every business claims to be "green"; we have been diverted from urgent, adequate ecological change required to secure being.

    Many mainstream (and some "radical") environmentalists, most businesses and essentially all governments are greenwashing — misleading the public regarding the environmental benefits of their practices, policies and products. Certified FSC logging destroys ancient forests, climate and water. Coal is unlikely to ever be clean as existing plants emit into the atmosphere, and sequestration is unproven. Biofuels hurt the environment, geo-engineering will destroy remaining natural processes, and buying more stuff is rarely good for the environment.

    It is time to stop the greenwashing. After two decades of successfully raising awareness regarding climate change, forest protection and other challenges to global ecological sustainability; increasingly my time is spent reacting to dangerous, insufficient responses that fail to address root causes of ecological decline, provide a false sense of action, and frequently consolidate and do more environmental harm.

    Many "greenwash" to make money, some to be perceived as effective advocates, while others believe incremental progress without changing the system is the best that can be done. Yet all are delaying policies necessary simply to survive. The greatest obstacle to identifying, refining, espousing and implementing policies required to maintain a habitable Earth may come from "environmentalists" proposing inadequate half-measures that delay and undermine the rigorous work that must be done to bring humanity back into nature’s fold.

    Sufficient policies required to save the Earth are massive in scope and ambition. Deep-seated change is required in how we house, feed and clothe ourselves; in our understanding of acceptable livelihoods and happy lives; and in our relationship with the biosphere and each other. To maintain a livable Earth there is no alternative to less people and consumption, a smaller and restorative economy, and an end to cutting natural vegetation and burning fossil fuels.

    Systematic failure of global ecosystems and social systems must be addressed in more than a token manner. A whole series of policy actions exist that we know are needed, would work, are sufficient, and could start immediately. These include massive investments into subsidizing renewable energy, implementing population controls, banning coal, ending old-growth logging and financing carbon emission reductions.

    Given the Earth has already exceeded what can be sustained in these regards, not only must the destruction stop, but massive regional scale ecological restoration must commence to establish rewilded and connected ecological reserves. Economic growth beyond steady-state use of natural capital must be stopped, and sustainable relocalized communities built around bioregions.

    Certainly ecologically positive technology has a role to play. Living in the country and needing a vehicle I recently chose the best transportation option society offers me and bought a Toyota Prius. But leading environmentalists touting technology as the primary emphasis to save our environment are dreadfully misinformed, and are obviously unaware of the ecological nature of being. They seem to have forgotten about the primacy of maintaining and restoring ecosystems.

    Even as we personally strive to live frugal, rich lives; necessary consumption should focus upon durable items that will last. Strong tools and minds are required to grow food, make a righteous living, and otherwise practice ecological living. Excessive consumption is a poor substitute for a truthful, fully aware, knowledge filled and experience rich life. All can and should enjoy some luxuries, rather than some enjoying all.

    Global ecological threats are intensifying — oceans lifeless, forests tattered, water scarce, and the atmosphere perhaps irreparably damaged. This occurs even as a climate change backlash builds, largely as a result of truthful apocalyptic warnings presented without adequate policies that go beyond greenwash responses and actually promise a hope filled solution likely and able to succeed.

    Given this increased urgency and public awareness, the environmental community must espouse rigorous, sufficient polices "while the iron is hot" and demand real actions that are sufficient to solve global ecological crises. And greenwashers beware: if you stand in the way of sufficient ecological responses to the greatest emergency of all times, you will be exposed as Earth destroying charlatans and resisted.

  • Arkansas boffins fuel car from fat

    "Major oil companies are already examining biodiesel as an alternative to petroleum," said R.E. "Buddy" Babcock, professor of chemical engineering. "With the current price of petroleum diesel and the results of this project and others, I think energy producers will think even more seriously about combining petroleum-based diesel with a biodiesel product made out of crude and inexpensive feedstocks."

    Under Babcock’s guidance, Brent Schulte, a chemical-engineering graduate student in the university’s College of Engineering, subjected low-grade chicken fat, donated by Tyson Foods, and tall oil fatty acids, provided by Georgia Pacific, to a chemical process known as supercritical methanol treatment. Supercritical methanol treatment dissolves and causes a reaction between components of a product — in this case, chicken fat and tall oil — by subjecting the product to high temperature and pressure. Substances become "supercritical" when they are heated and pressurized to a critical point, the highest temperature and pressure at which the substance can exist in equilibrium as a vapor and liquid. The simple, one-step process does not require a catalyst.

    Schulte treated chicken fat and tall oil with supercritical methanol and produced biodiesel yields in excess of 89 and 94 percent, respectively. With chicken fat, Schulte reached maximum yield at 325 degrees Celsius and a 40-to-1 molar ratio, which refers to the amount of methanol applied. The process also produced a respectable yield of 80 percent at 300 degrees Celsius and the same amount of methanol. At 275 degrees Celsius and the same amount of methanol, the process was ineffective. Ideal results using tall oil fatty acid were achieved at 325 degrees Celsius and a 10-to-1 molar ratio. At 300 degrees Celsius and the same amount of methanol, the conversion produced a yield of almost 80 percent. Again, at 275 degrees Celsius, the process was ineffective.

    Previous efforts, including a study two years ago by another one of Babcock’s graduate students (see below), to make biodiesel out of low-cost feedstocks — as opposed to refined oils — have used one of two conventional methods, base-catalyzed or acid-catalyzed esterification. Although successful at producing biodiesel, these conventional methods struggle to be economically feasible due to long reaction times, excessive amounts of methanol required and/or undesired production of soaps during processing.

    "The supercritical method hit the free fatty-acid problem head on," Babcock said. "Because it dissolves the feed material and eliminates the need for the base catalyst, we now do not have the problems with soap formation and loss of yield. The supercritical method actually prefers free fatty acid feedstocks."

    Biodiesel is a nonpetroleum-based alternative diesel fuel that consists of alkyl esters derived from renewable feedstocks such as plant oils or animal fats. The fuel is made by converting these oils and fats into what are known as fatty acid alkyl esters. The conventional processes require the oils or fats be heated and mixed with a combination of methanol and sodium hydroxide as a catalyst. The conversion process is called transesterification.

    Most biodiesel is produced from refined vegetable oils, such as soybean and rapeseed oil, which are expensive; they generally account for 60 to 80 percent of the total cost of biodiesel. Due to these high feedstock prices, biodiesel production struggles to be economically feasible. Currently, as Babcock alluded, biodiesel cannot compete with petroleum diesel unless the per-gallon price of diesel remains higher than $3. For these reasons, researchers recently have focused efforts on less refined and less-expensive feedstocks as a more viable competitor to conventional diesel.

    Biodiesel has many benefits. In addition to reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, it is better for the environment than purely petroleum-based products. As a renewable, biodegradable and thus carbon-neutral material, biodiesel does not contribute to greenhouse gases. In fact, it decreases sulfur and particulate-matter emissions. It also provides lubrication for better-functioning mechanical parts and has excellent detergent properties.

    "Biodiesel provides an effective, sustainable-use fuel with many desirable properties," Schulte said. "In addition to being a renewable, biodegradable and carbon-neutral fuel source, it can be formed in a matter of months from feedstocks produced locally, which promotes a more sustainable energy infrastructure. It also decreases dependence on foreign oil and creates new labor and market opportunities for domestic crops."

    Schulte worked with Ed Clausen, professor of chemical engineering and holder of the Ray C. Adam Chair of Chemical Engineering, and Michael Popp, professor of agricultural economics, in addition to Babcock. Schulte’s study, which led to his master’s thesis and is available upon request, was supported by the University of Arkansas Mack-Blackwell Rural Transportation Center. His work was awarded first place at the inaugural Admiral Jack Buffington Poster Paper Contest sponsored by the transportation center at its annual advisory board meeting.

  • Rudd misleads Australia over whale watching program

    News Ltd this morning reported that the aircraft’s owner, Skytraders, had only late yesterday lodged an application with CASA to fly to the southern oceans, with an air safety spokesman saying that it would be a long process.

    "The process has started but it’s only just started and there will be a lot of issues that have got to be identified, discussed and addressed," CASA’s Peter Gibson said.

    Ministers Smith and Garrett yesterday attempted to quell concern over the issue, saying that there was ‘plenty of time’ before the Japanese returned from their mission, with the cull sometimes continuing into March.

    Despite the Government pledging to dispatch the mission within "a few days" of December 19, it appears planning was not in place at the time of the announcement.

    Shadow Environment Minister Greg Hunt said yesterday that the Government had misled the Australian people, and was sending the wrong message to the Japanese Government.

    "Sixteen days ago Mr Smith and Mr Garrett [said] within hours the ship would be on the high seas protecting the great whales," Mr Hunt said.

    "Hopefully… I’m sure one day they will get the ship on the seas and the plane in the air… the Japanese Prime Minister must be sitting back wondering…." he said.

  • Dance Party isolated in local floods

    Parts of the northern rivers and far northern New South Wales have been declared a natural disaster area after heavy rain and flooding.

    The floods are being called the worst to hit the region in more than 50 years.

    NSW Emergency Services Minister Nathan Rees made the announcement at Banora Point during an inspection tour of the region today.

    Mr Rees says it is a serious situation.

    "We’ve seen the prospect of severe flooding in places like Coraki in the next 24 hours and river heights of up to 16 metres in some locations and 120 people evacuated in some towns," he said.

    "The sitaution’s serious and on the basis of the advice from the SES … I’m declaring a natural disaster area for the Tweed Shire of New South Wales and also for Kyogle.

    "We’ll be keeping a close eye on the Richmond Valley Shire."

    About 150 people were evacuated from low-lying areas on the Tweed Coast and Kyogle early this morning.

    The Kyogle mayor, Ernie Bennett, says the Bruxner Highway has been severely damaged.

    "As you walked along the bitumen surface you could actually jump up and down six inches on it," he said.

    "The water under that subsurface is going to destroy that road and it doesn’t take very much of a highway to chew up a million dolars when you have to replace it."

     

  • Population growth and consumption

    Published by the New York Times 

    To mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.

    To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today, there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce.

    If most of the world’s 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local per capita consumption rate.

    The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.

    The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that’s a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.

    People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita consumption, although most of them couldn’t specify that it’s by a factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has become clear that the oceans that once protected the United States no longer do so. There will be more terrorist attacks against us and Europe, and perhaps against Japan and Australia, as long as that factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates persists.

    People who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle. Governments of developing countries make an increase in living standards a primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of people in the developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their own, by emigrating, especially to the United States and Western Europe, Japan and Australia. Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption country raises world consumption rates, even though most immigrants don’t succeed immediately in multiplying their consumption by 32.

    Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita consumption rates at home, China stands out. It has the world’s fastest growing economy, and there are 1.3 billion Chinese, four times the United States population. The world is already running out of resources, and it will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level consumption rates. Already, China is competing with us for oil and metals on world markets.

    Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours, but let’s suppose they rise to our level. Let’s also make things easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world consumption — that is, no other country increases its consumption, all national populations (including China’s) remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.

    If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).

    Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people.

    We Americans may think of China’s growing consumption as a problem. But the Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have. To tell them not to try would be futile.

    The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But the world doesn’t have enough resources to allow for raising China’s consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our levels. Does this mean we’re headed for disaster?

    No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.

    Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures.

    Other aspects of our consumption are wasteful, too. Most of the world’s fisheries are still operated non-sustainably, and many have already collapsed or fallen to low yields — even though we know how to manage them in such a way as to preserve the environment and the fish supply. If we were to operate all fisheries sustainably, we could extract fish from the oceans at maximum historical rates and carry on indefinitely.

    The same is true of forests: we already know how to log them sustainably, and if we did so worldwide, we could extract enough timber to meet the world’s wood and paper needs. Yet most forests are managed non-sustainably, with decreasing yields.

    Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will.

    Fortunately, in the last year there have been encouraging signs. Australia held a recent election in which a large majority of voters reversed the head-in-the-sand political course their government had followed for a decade; the new government immediately supported the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

    Also in the last year, concern about climate change has increased greatly in the United States. Even in China, vigorous arguments about environmental policy are taking place, and public protests recently halted construction of a huge chemical plant near the center of Xiamen. Hence I am cautiously optimistic. The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.

    Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of “Collapse” and “Guns, Germs and Steel.”

  • Population growth and consumption

    Published by the New York Times 

    To mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.

    To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today, there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce.

    If most of the world’s 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local per capita consumption rate.

    The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.

    The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that’s a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.

    People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita consumption, although most of them couldn’t specify that it’s by a factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has become clear that the oceans that once protected the United States no longer do so. There will be more terrorist attacks against us and Europe, and perhaps against Japan and Australia, as long as that factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates persists.

    People who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle. Governments of developing countries make an increase in living standards a primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of people in the developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their own, by emigrating, especially to the United States and Western Europe, Japan and Australia. Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption country raises world consumption rates, even though most immigrants don’t succeed immediately in multiplying their consumption by 32.

    Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita consumption rates at home, China stands out. It has the world’s fastest growing economy, and there are 1.3 billion Chinese, four times the United States population. The world is already running out of resources, and it will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level consumption rates. Already, China is competing with us for oil and metals on world markets.

    Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours, but let’s suppose they rise to our level. Let’s also make things easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world consumption — that is, no other country increases its consumption, all national populations (including China’s) remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.

    If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).

    Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people.

    We Americans may think of China’s growing consumption as a problem. But the Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have. To tell them not to try would be futile.

    The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But the world doesn’t have enough resources to allow for raising China’s consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our levels. Does this mean we’re headed for disaster?

    No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.

    Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures.

    Other aspects of our consumption are wasteful, too. Most of the world’s fisheries are still operated non-sustainably, and many have already collapsed or fallen to low yields — even though we know how to manage them in such a way as to preserve the environment and the fish supply. If we were to operate all fisheries sustainably, we could extract fish from the oceans at maximum historical rates and carry on indefinitely.

    The same is true of forests: we already know how to log them sustainably, and if we did so worldwide, we could extract enough timber to meet the world’s wood and paper needs. Yet most forests are managed non-sustainably, with decreasing yields.

    Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will.

    Fortunately, in the last year there have been encouraging signs. Australia held a recent election in which a large majority of voters reversed the head-in-the-sand political course their government had followed for a decade; the new government immediately supported the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

    Also in the last year, concern about climate change has increased greatly in the United States. Even in China, vigorous arguments about environmental policy are taking place, and public protests recently halted construction of a huge chemical plant near the center of Xiamen. Hence I am cautiously optimistic. The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.

    Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of “Collapse” and “Guns, Germs and Steel.”